Gardening guru Mel Bartholomew reaps global harvest

Mel Bartholomew is the author of “Square Foot Gardening,” from Rodale Press (1981 and updated in 2006) that sold two-million copies thus far, making it one of the bestselling garden books in America. Its success led Bartholomew to create the non-profit Square Foot Gardening Foundation with humanitarian projects all over the globe. Its mission: Solve world hunger by using the “teach a man to fish” theory. Participants actually teach mothers and children how to feed themselves using the SFG method.

10QMEL.no2

10QMEL.no2

Bartholomew has been included in Who’s Who twice — once for his engineering career and recently for his horticultural and humanitarian accomplishments. A civil engineer and graduate of Georgia Tech, he built a consulting engineering firm specializing in site and utility design. When he retired at age 42, he took up gardening as a hobby. As the saying goes, the rest is history …

What brought you to La Jolla?

I am on a one-year sabbatical from Eden, Utah to write my next book.

What might you add, subtract or improve in the area?

I would make that ugly and filthy lifeguard station disappear overnight, and then when the powers-to-be finally get their acts together, we could build something outstanding and a monument to La Jolla and its pioneer history.

What inspires you?

The vast, abundant and never-ending opportunities we have here in America.

If you hosted a dinner party for eight, whom (living or deceased) would you invite?

I’ll serve so there’s room for Presidents Reagan, Lincoln and Jefferson. General Patton, Julius Caesar, Thomas Edison, one of the Wright Brothers, Michelangelo, and set an extra plate for Leonardo da Vinci.